Egg chucking: a Montclair High School 'tradition'

A Montclair Fire Department truck flashes its lights as about 420 graduates from Montclair High School prepare to depart for a supervised, all-night party as part of Project Graduation.

Congratulations, graduates.

How about an egg in your face?

Every year, hundreds of recently matriculated seniors board school buses and take a raucous trip around town on their way to Project Graduation, a school-sponsored, end-of-the-year party designed to give kids a safe, supervised and fun environment for graduation night.

The 10- or 11-bus cavalcade, escorted by vehicles from the Montclair Police and Fire Departments with their sirens wailing and lights flashing, is a familiar sight to many longtime Montclairites. Honking farewell to bystanders, the buses take students and their chaperones past every elementary and middle school in the district, with cheering, boisterous graduates leaning out the windows and whooping it up.

"It's become a great tradition," said 2nd Ward Township Councilwoman Robin Schlager, chair of Montclair's Project Graduation Committee in 2010 and 2012.

Unfortunately, Schlager acknowledged, it's become common for "gregarious" teens to gather along the parade route and throw eggs and other debris - including balloons filled with maple syrup and vinegar - at the passing buses.

Schlager told The Times that the problem has become more pronounced during the past two years. This year, police confiscated three cartons of eggs and a water gun from one batch of teens, she said.

According to Montclair Police Detective Lt. David O'Dowd, the practice of pelting the departing Project Graduation buses with eggs has become "almost a tradition at this point."

O'Dowd said that the egg throwing is generally done by kids around the graduates' ages, mostly from the class before them.

It's not entirely a harmless prank, O'Dowd told The Times.

"One problem is that they freeze the eggs in the freezer," he said, adding that kids aren't only throwing eggs, but also have been chucking receptacles filled with unknown liquids.

"They start coming up with concoctions ... anything that they can think of. They'll use something wet - probably more than water but I don't know what's in it - and follow up with flour, almost like a tar-and-feathering type of thing."

O'Dowd noted that the problem is that "you might have a kid with the window open and they catch a frozen egg or a concoction in the face."

According to O'Dowd, the police escort for the Project Graduation buses is partly to help prevent such a problem. He explained that every year, the MPD will have its Community Policing and Traffic units involved, summoning whatever available vehicles and manpower they have at hand that night. The police escort helps the Project Graduation buses "leapfrog" intersections, and make sure that there isn't an "egg ambush" waiting further down the route.

Police usually escort the buses to the freeway, and sometimes even a little beyond, O'Dowd said.

IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL ...

Despite the dubious tradition of egging Project Graduation buses, Schlager told The Times that the evening is still a fun and safe event for teens.

"Listen, kids are kids and stuff happens," said Schlager. "But 99 percent of Project Graduation is a winner."

"The majority of it isn't malicious," agreed O'Dowd. "They just don't think of the consequences sometimes. But we have to keep the consequences in mind more than they do. If someone gets injured on the bus on the way, it's going to hold the whole thing up and potentially ruin it for everybody."